


[Meta] In which Wanderlustlover takes her Meta to McRollins, and hits up Steve with a battering ram (not Catherine, this time)

by wanderlustlover



Series: Hawaii Five-0 Season Three Meta [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:32:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A serious look at the problems with McRollin's that have almost nothing to do with Catherine Rollin's herself. (Aka, why this relationship is not working, even/especially for Fandom's Super Star Super SEAL). Circa 3.19.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[Meta] In which Wanderlustlover takes her Meta to McRollins, and hits up Steve with a battering ram (not Catherine, this time)

There’s a scene from the recent episode where Steve references Cath’s dad and her childhood, for exactly two lines of dialogue, and that is the scene stuck in my head today, so lets talk about this today. Not about or Cath, or the Lying, or anyone’s specific feelings about the Girl-Portion of this ship in question, and whether it’s floating or sinking, or should be or shouldn’t be. 

 

**Lets talk about bad writing.**

 

This scene asks us to open our minds and acknowledge Steve has met/discussed things ith Cath’s father. The comment is middle of the road, and very bare of true details. At a completely indiscriminate time period, so we actually have no clue if it was as friend or in this relationship, nor do we even know if it was in person. Everything you take from these two lines is an extrapolation. Which we do a lot as a fandom, no matter how you watch or what you watch for.

 

There only things this really tells us. Only that it involved three people and embarrassing kiddie pictures and details about a childhood professional skating career.  

 

Let me step to a side and talk to you not as a fangril of this show, but as someone with an English Masters. We call this “Telling, Not Showing” and it’s considered weak writing and we are brained with a brick, for something like six years, not to do this. Even stronger if your are going for an MFA in Writing/ Creative Writing and not a hard science’s Art degree like Literature and Language. This is The Cardinal Sin (right up there with not properly giving credit to sources). This is the action where you claim something, but can’t build it, ‘show it,’ walk the audience through characters growing/experiencing everything. Where you claim the sky is blue, but no one is looking at it, or notices it in the context of the subject. 

 

You just want to have the awesome gold treasure, but you never want your character to have had to work for it, or get to it. They simply have it in their hands already.

 

I have so many problems with this two line random throw-out, drop-in, and I think they revolve around the fact I feel like I’m hearing a story I missed out on reading. Especially since reading the original draft of the Spec Script for this show last week. When Cath was originally around from the beginning, and Steve was someone who texted pictures of roses, and ‘love’ was a word casually used at the end of their conversations. And that story probably still would have been awesome, but it’s not the one that ended up on my screen. 

 

Just like I feel we snatched up Michelle Borth, when Combat Hospital ended, before she could find another solid job, and pushed her into the role she was always supposed to have had as Cath. Except. And here’s the problem: it’s two seasons late, and the Steve we have on screen, isn’t that person from that spec sheet either. And I feel like suddenly we’re trying to jimmy this thing from the spec, like it’s always been there, and hand wave entirely a different world between between point A and Season Three.

 

Because lets say we skip the whole what this says about Cath thing, even. Let’s look at Steve. Because he’s a main character of the show, and has been, and because I love Steve. I’m a Steve girl, down into my marrow, but I’m a girl with an English Masters, who was taught how to rip apart a thesis, and a writing draft, no matter how much I love the content or the writer. So lets go no holds barred on my boy, and what this all says about him that makes me sick even.

 

Because if this is supposed to be “Telling, not Showing” reference to the fact Steve has also gone out of his way to meet Cath’s parents (or specifically father, who is all we’ve heard of twice now), we’re perpetuating a non-involvement even on Steve’s part that is massive. And terribly selfish to an almost willfully blind degree. 

 

Steve’s someone constantly with his head stuck in the sand about massive emotions, like love or family, but even Steve would know that meeting a parent was “more than a thing.”

 

But we constantly get a Steve in this “romantic partner” setup and season who: continually calls her only for favors (3.2-forward), continually balks at even his partner/best friend calling her his girlfriend (3.3), watches a movie through her trying to kiss him and even denies that’s what he’s doing (3.5), reads a book through her talking to him until there’s sex involved (3.16).

 

He’s always been great at making a grand romantic gesture (Season 1’s beach & steaks, Season 2’s reserves, Season 3’s tux carry off) but he does not do so well in-between times. He does not even connect in the in-between times if we are to take Catherine’s dialogue on the phone into count, where she asks what he needs and she says it’s feasibly he could be calling to talk, but that he never has before. 

 

Just like at the beginning of the show we hear they’ve never made it dinner. 

 

Okay. These are all still “telling” things. Because we hear Catherine tells us. That they’ve  **never** made it to dinner. That Steve’s  **never** called her just to talk to her before, when no for a favor. Both of these are backed up by canon though. Look at Season One and Two, and point to anytime Steve takes her off to dinner. Point to one time where he calls her for something that isn’t a job. 

 

Point to a single moment where we get a name drop of him thinking about her. 

 

The first seasons made it really clear, these are two people who work stunningly well together, get along, love to have sex together, are equally dedicated to their careers, do not talk between dalliances/work favors, and at peace with their situation. Because we are never given one clip of either of them wishing it was more, commenting that they want more. 

 

In the Telling vs. Showing game, we still actually don’t know why Cath is in Hawaii and not on a boat in Season Three. We’ve never been told or shown that she got benched to a base, or put herself in reserves. We had a near one-third of the season where she appear nearly every episode without a reference to her background change or her job. 

 

We can only assume because of her single details — one episode in a Intel station still and several where she appears in Navy camaflouge — that everything is somehow copacetic with her job. Even though she’s constantly not working, on leave, or being stolen to work a case unrelated to her position/rate [rank]/skill set.  

This is beyond sloppy, weak character insertion, which is, again, a fault of the writing. Not the character.

 

We were told as a fandom that Steve and Cath were going to have this rough and bumpy new road because they were going to be thrown together more. Which we never got either. We never saw them do what they should have, which was sit down and shoot the shit on saying “hey, lets take this buddy, bro working thing with great sex and give it a real go.” It’s not referenced, or head tipped toward. 

 

We just suddenly went from Cath who wore slinky-nice clothes and was always being shown having sex or getting to it shortly, moved into the position of the Love Interest who runs to the Male Lead’s arms when he returns from a dangerous thing. And their relationship suddenly turned far more PG in display. No more were there no clothing in bed shots, or everyone rushing to get dressed. Our make-out scene’s turned strictly family-friendly, and frequent, changing the entire cinema-graphic way we were supposed to interpret them in a setting even. 

 

And we still have Steve up to pretty much every single old trick of season One and Two. Please reference the list above. Wherein he still claims they aren’t together, still treats her the same way where it comes to calls, sex, favors,  **and** the one grand gesture to make things up. We do get more scenes of her having lunch or dinner, at a food truck, in a car, or at his house. None of them with a romantic leaning to them (nothing in the least like the steaks on the beach gesture two years back now). 

 

Nor do we even get any scenes of Steve closing out hard cases, or confiding his troubles with this season, or his mother, with Cath. We don’t get brooding, lanai, staring with her. She’s very relegated to his Good Time girl, either on a couch or on a job.

 

So my problem with the way I’m supposed to assume these people are together, in any resembling a romantic, relationship goes solidly both ways. Because if this is Steve McGarrett as a boyfriend? A serious, long, term, this has been his girlfriend for the last two-three years, of even just this **one** year? 

 

That’s not the kind of boyfriend or relationship I’d wish on anyone I love.  

 

Which is just sloppy, because we’re literally dragged straight overboard to love Steve for every single other amazing trait of being super human, selfless, and loyal to everyone near him for pretty much every other second he’s on the screen. So I have this on-going massive problem with the depiction of this as a relationship of any kind. That hasn’t been shown to us to have changed, by example in a canon scene (showing) or a relation of conversation to anyone (telling). 

 

I keep scratching my head. I keep turning it over and over. Because nothing is healthy and moving on either side of this. And neither of them is pushing for something more in actually canon scenes that can be pointed to. And yet there’s this endless debate and push that it is more. That there are titles in news articles. And I’m sorry, but consider me well educated by both university and fandom. 

 

If you want me to believe someone is dead — you have to show me the body.

 

You want me to believe someone is in love — then give me the proof to believe it.


End file.
